


Out of Range

by Chronolith



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 20:51:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronolith/pseuds/Chronolith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You have the same damned nightmare over and over. You can hear him crying, but you can't figure out where the fuck he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Range

**Author's Note:**

> 6/29/2015 I wrote this before we knew very much about Bro's character or the deeply fucked up and abusive relationship that he had with Dave. This should not be read as an whitewashing of that abusive dynamic nor as an attempt to rehabilitate Bro's character. But rather maybe as an AU? One where Bro was not the brainwashed puppet of Caliborn and a deeply abusive fuckwad.

You still get nightmares about it.

That one time you lost Dave in one of those mammoth grocery stories with the industrial florescent lights, shitty elevator pop, and miles of white linoleum that make you disassociate at 30 yards. Kid had taken off to get cookies while you were trying to sort out if it was white foods four year olds were supposed to refuse or every other color of food. (Not that it mattered, you discovered later, Dave was a remarkably unfussy eater. As long as it was edible, he'd eat it. Thank fuck for that.) And your 20 year old past self had nearly dropped dead of a heart attack on the spot.

You'd found him about ten minutes later peering with an expression of intense concentration at those damned hallmark cards that sang when you opened them.

He had squeaked with indignant fury when you had scooped him and squeezed him like you were four yourself and he was your teddy bear. You'd been surprised that at your mile-a-minute heartbeat hadn't rattled the little kid's teeth out. You'd held him even though he squirmed and complained in that tiny toddler voice. With one cheek mashed against the top of his white-blonde head you'd counted to what seemed like 100 while your heart slowed down to normal human levels and not Oh God Oh God Defcon Five Oh God.

Dave managed to slip your watch a couple of times after that, slippery little bastard, but you got better about reading his cues for when he was about to pull a runner on you. You'd also gotten better about figuring out where he'd wander off to.

Any source of music.

Books, particularly books on photography. Kid could stay glued to National Geographic for hours if you let him

Electronics, but never televisions.

Eyewear, at least until that Egbert kid had sent him those aviators which you thought were now welded to his face. Which was cool, not like you had any high ground there.

So, yeah, you'd learned where Dave would inevitably wander off to when he decided that sticking to you wasn't the best plan. And you'd stopped having heart attacks whenever it happened.

But you did have nightmares.

In your dreams it's hot--worse than anything Houston could come up with to roast its hapless inhabitants--and the terrain is nothing but lava, black rocks, and random broken clockwork. Enormous shattered gears reaching to a blackened sky.

In your dreams you're not even thrown by the weird as shit topography. You're too busy trying to find Dave. All you can think is ' _find Dave, find Dave.'_ In the worst of the nightmares--the ones where you wake up covered in sweat, heart hammering like it's trying to hammer it's way out of your ribs, and you always _always_ have to go peer at the kid while he sleeps to reassure yourself that he's there, he's fine and you're just fucking crazy--you can hear him crying. But you can't find him.

Just these broken, half-swallowed sobs bouncing off the demolished clockwork and echoing across the roiling lava.

You think if your subconscious was a little less subtle, if Dave's crying was some sort of great big hysterical wailing, you'd be less fucked up about it. But no. No, your subconscious knows you and it knows him.

So all you hear in these fucking terrible dreams are these muted, devastated sounds. Like Dave wants to scream and scream, but is forcing it down--forcing himself to be controlled, be cool but can't quite get there. And you go insane trying to find him. Trying to find who the fucker that made Dave sound like that. Because when you find that sonuvabitch you are going to _gut_ him and wear his intestines for garters.

But you never find Dave.

You race over shattered ground, diving over sudden lava flows and tumble down ebony rock driven by a barely controlled panic. But you never find him. All you can do is try to source that broken, muted echo of Dave's crying but you never quite manage it.

When you wake up--covered in sweat and scared all the way to your soul--you drag yourself out of bed and creep like a shadow to his room. You sit on the edge of his bed and just watch him sleep. Watch his slender chest rise and fall in the moonlight, his face still and vulnerable as it never is when he's awake. Because you've taught him to keep his guard up and watch his six. You've taught him to never take anything at face value because you can never know where that sucker punch is going to come from.

So you watch him sleep, innocent and so heart breakingly fragile, and you swear with the moon and stars as witnesses, that if anyone makes him cry like that you are going to find the motherfucker and you are going to put a sword through their _god damned head_.

You fucking swear it.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this flavor of nightmare--the 'can't find younger sibling, can only hear her crying'--for about ten years running. Now I just call her when I wake up from it time differences be damned. And then write bad fanfiction. Haha.


End file.
